London Round 2: The next day

We started out our day at the Tate Britain!

It was absolutely fantastic! The art collection there was so lovely!

Aww, precious.

   I found some of my favorite artists--I never guessed I would ever see their work live, wow.

"Ophelia" John Everett Millais

Sorry for the glare of the lights...I couldn't do anything about it. 

"The Lady of Shalott" John William Waterhouse

"Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" John Singer Sargent

"A Wreck, with Fishing Boats" JMW Turner

    There were millions (okay, more like dozens) of paintings I totally fell in love with, but I just tried to pick my favorites to show to y'all. Speaking of the word y'all I wish English had a personal pronoun for speaking to multiple people that didn't make you sound like a Texan (just kidding all my Texas friends, the world would be lacking something if not for you).  I just mean that it doesn't sound like something you could use in a formal situation.."you guys" doesn't really work either...so I propose that we start using the French personal pronoun "vous" which is used for speaking to someone in a formal form or when speaking to a group, it just makes life so much easier. So I'm going to do that from now on, just a heads up.

     After the Tate Britain I went with a group of people to Leicester Square to try and find some tickets to my all-time favorite musical: Les Miserables. Sadly, the only seats that were left were the 85£= Not going to happen, sorry chum-- or the 15£ ones that are really worth 5£ because you're facing a wall or have a pole in the middle of your view. Thus, I did not end up investing in a ticket. Don't worry, I already cried and listened to the original cast recording, so I'm over it. 

    Then I moseyed off to the National Portrait Gallery and then realized that I was kind of museumed-out and just wanted to go on a long walk. So I did a terrible thing, I only went through one section of the gallery and then left...terrible I know, I'm sorry. Turns out the Mona Lisa was there...oops. I did see this one though:

Remember this from that one textbook?

    My long walk took me from Trafalgar Square to St. Paul's Cathedral. On the way I saw:

The original Twining's tea shop! I love herbal tea, so I stopped in and got some. Ahhh, herbal tea just doesn't taste as good anywhere else as it does in England.

    I forgot to take lots of pictures because I was just enjoying my walk. It was great fun to walk up Fleet street, see a pie shop and then a barber's shop just after it. I had assumed that after the Sweeney Todd story that eating a pie or going to the barber would be a sort of taboo along that street, I guess the British just have a dark sense of humor.

    Upon arriving at St. Paul's I was met with this sight:

    Hippies!? I don't know, I was too shy to talk to them. I think they were protesting a new government reform. They looked like they were having fun, playing guitar together and drawing with side-walk chalk, I really should have made friends with them. Oh well, next time.

    Our group was meeting at St. Paul's for evensong. I'd read in guide books about evensong, but I didn't know what it was until I went. Basically, it's a church service in the evening with singing. I loved it, the singing was so beautiful and the acoustics were so nice, the harmonies of the choir were to die for! I wasn't allowed to record it, and the mic on my camera wouldn't have done it justice, but it sounded kind of like this, except the choir was much smaller.

  Then I wandered along Oxford street with some friends. I couldn't believe that Christmas lights were already up, it made me feel like I've been gone a lot longer than I thought.

Have I mentioned how much I love walking at night?